Colleagues, below you will find background information and suggested talking points regarding the Government Printing Office’s FY2009 funding request. The House and Senate Legislative Branch Subcommittees will soon consider GPO's FY2009 funding request, and it is crucial for them to hear from depository librarians and others who work with government information about the many ways that GPO products and services, in partnership with librarians, are used to meet the information needs of their constituents.

It is particularly important for those of you who live or work in a district represented by any of the members of the House or Senate Legislative Branch Subcommittees (listed below) to contact those legislators.

Talking points

The largest single component of the appropriation is for Congressional Printing and Binding, which is critical for providing access to legislative information, and supports the delivery of publications
in print and electronic formats to approximately 1,250 Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) libraries nationwide for the free use of the public.

This request includes $21.2 million for the continuing development of the Federal Digital System (FDsys), the new digital platform which will be a repository for all Federal documents. The system is crucial to GPO’s future in the 21st Century and is slated for its first public release later in 2008. We believe FDsys is absolutely essential to GPO’s future. It is a myth to think that utilizing the Web to provide public access to reliable government information doesn’t carry a hefty price tag. There are enormous costs in managing the life cycle of online information, including its permanent public access and preservation. The funding for FDsys to date has come from monies reprogrammed in 2005. We ask that congress support FDsys with a commitment to its launch next fall and its important future enhancements.

As GPO continues to perform information dissemination through the FDLP on a predominately electronic basis, as mandated in the conference report accompanying the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act for FY 1996, the agency needs to invest in technology infrastructure and supporting systems. The requested increase will cover projects for FDLP program outreach, additional data storage, modernization of items selection systems and other mainframe-based applications, the cataloging of content, and the initial costs for digitizing the FDLP legacy collection, a key component of GPO’s strategic vision and the Federal Digital System.

GPO has proven to be an innovative, forward-looking provider and disseminator of government information. In the past two years GPO has implemented a new program for federal agency document reproduction needs through a national vendor, developed a digital signature which enabled the President’s budget to be electronically transmitted to Congress for the first time, and prepared to incorporate the new digital platform into its operations.

Legislators need to hear our stories about how important a vibrant and vital GPO is to our ability as librarians to serve their constituents. GPO deserves tremendous credit for its rapid and dramatic transition from a primarily tangible-product publishing operation to a primarily digital one, but less than full funding threatens to slow that migration, leaving some elements of their plan to promote permanent public access to vital government information unfinished. Congress, which pressed GPO to make this transition, must now be encouraged to embrace it in a way that allows GPO to finish the job.

The Government Documents Round Table of the American Library Association urges you to check the list of House and Senate Legislative Branch Subcomittee members below. If you live or work in a district or state represented by any of the legislators listed there, please contact them and urge them to support full funding for the Government Printing Office in fiscal year 2009.

Contact information for members of the House and Senate Legislative Branch Subcommittees is available from the links below. Or, call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. A switchboard operator will connect you directly with the House or Senate office you request.

Feel free to personalize this text with your own words. Our message to our representatives is strongest when we share our stories of the importance of government information to our users and their constituents.

Dear (Representative/Senator) ______ ,

I am writing to urge you, as a member of the Subcommittee on Legislative Branch, to support the full FY2009 funding request of the U.S. Government Printing Office. GPO has made a powerful response to calls from Congress and other stakeholders to bring the dissemination of Federal government information into the electronic age. GPO needs the funding to ensure that none of the elements of this transformation are left unfinished.

GPO's electronic initiatives are needed to replace obsolete technology and upgrade electronic services. The Salaries & Expenses request includes crucial funding to digitize the legacy FDLP collection and acquire expanded Web harvesting services, both of which will provide information for ingest to the Federal Digital System (FDsys). This request will also enable GPO to catalog thousands of documents harvested from agency Web sites and develop authentic online publications.

While digital dissemination has made many publications easier to find and use, print is still the most useful format for certain types of information and certain categories of users. Funding is needed to ensure that essential congressional resources of the 111th Congress are published and distributed to depository libraries in a timely manner. And print is still essential in the legal community because print remains the only format courts recognize as both official and authentic.

GPO's request for the revolving fund includes $33 million for essential investments in information technology infrastructure and systems development, and facilities maintenance and repair. A key project is the continuing development of the Federal Digital System (FDsys), which is essential to GPO's future. With your funding support to complete FDsys, the first public release will be later this year.

Full funding to support a vigorous GPO, working with its partners in the Federal Depository Library Program and all libraries which use government information, will help ensure that your constituents have easy, no-fee access to Federal government information, both current and historic. I urge you to fund fully GPO's FY 2009 budget request. Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Background on the Issue

From the statement of Mary Alice Baish to the House Appropriations Committee, Legislative Branch Subcommittee, on behalf of the American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, and Special Libraries Association, May 7, 2008
Our organizations strongly support Public Printer Robert C. Tapella’s statement of March
6, 2008 and we urge the Subcommittee to fund GPO’s full FY 2009 budget request of
$174.35 million. This includes $97.92 million for Congressional Printing and Binding
(CP&B); $43.42 million for the Salaries and Expenses (S&E) account; and $33 million
for the revolving fund. We believe that full funding is crucial because the FY 2008
omnibus appropriations bill resulted in lower levels of funding for GPO’s many
important programs, particularly for the IT infrastructure needed for the development of
the Federal Digital System. We further believe that full funding should be provided for
Congressional Printing and Binding to eliminate the shortfall in funding for this
important program, which is the source of congressional publications that are highly valued by users of depository library collections.

The Federal Digital System (FDsys) is a content-centric system which will ensure that electronic information from all three branches of the Federal government will be permanently available in electronic format, authenticated and versioned, and accessible through the Internet for easy searching, viewing, downloading and printing. We believe that its implementation is key to GPO’s ability to provide services to Congress, agencies,
depository libraries and the public in the 21st century.

GPO remains focused on the first public release of FDsys targeted for later this year. This
includes replacing GPO Access functionality and transferring current GPO Access
content into FDsys. Work on FDsys has also helped guide GPO’s efforts to meet disaster
recovery needs. Digital publications in GPO Access needed to be converted into the new
structure to work with modern search tools associated with GPO’s agency disaster
recovery plans. Accordingly, GPO migrated these digital publications in GPO Access
into a consistent, flexible, tagged dataset that support their disaster recovery plan and will be utilized in FDsys. Our communities have long urged GPO to implement a disaster
recovery capability and we are pleased with their progress in this arena.

On another important front, GPO is continuing its advancements in automated web
harvesting in anticipation of the second release of FDsys. The goal of web harvesting is
to discover and capture newly identified online publications that are within the scope of
GPO’s information dissemination programs, increasing public access to online
government information and ensuring its preservation.

The Salaries and Expenses appropriation is essential to supporting the FDLP, the very successful partnership program through which congressional and other important government publications and information products are disseminated to approximately 1,250 participating academic, public, law, Federal and other libraries nationwide. The S&E funds the cataloging, indexing, and distribution of Federal publications in print and electronic formats to depository libraries and other recipients designated by law. GPO’s FY 2009 S&E request of $43.42 represents a much-needed increase of $8.5 million over the current level to cover mandatory pay and price increases; overhead distribution; and several important information technology projects that are designed to expand and improve public access to government information.

We fully support GPO’s important effort to replace the obsolete technology of GPO
Access with the state-of-the-art Federal Digital System. GPO Access uses WAIS, an
antiquated pre-web technology that makes it difficult for the average user to search and
locate the information they need… GPO Access must be updated for the 21st century and the content migrated into FDsys. The search capabilities of FDsys will be a vast improvement over the current system and will provide users with advanced search capabilities. Although its first public launch is not scheduled until the end of the year, we have begun to see some progress because of new functionalities that FDsys already provides.

From the Public Printer’s statement to the House Appropriations Committee, Legislative Branch Subcommittee, March 6, 2008. (Appropriations Request of the GPO for Fiscal Year 2009)
For FY 2009, GPO is requesting a total of $174,354,000, to:
• meet projected requirements for GPO’s congressional printing and binding and information dissemination operations during FY 2009;
• recover the shortfall in the Congressional Printing and Binding Appropriation accumulated in FY 2007 and projected for FY 2008;
• provide investment funds for necessary information dissemination projects in the Federal Depository Library Program;
• complete the initial release of FDsys and continue development of system enhancements, and implement other improvements to GPO’s information technology infrastructure; and
• perform essential maintenance and repairs to aging buildings.

Of the total funding increase requested by GPO for FY 2009, approximately $21.2 million, or 43%, is directly related to the establishment and operation of FDsys, which is being designed to ingest, organize, manage, and output authenticated, official Federal information content for any use or purpose….. It also includes $5.7 million for GPO’s Salaries and Expenses Appropriation to digitize the legacy FDLP collection and acquire expanded Web harvesting services, both of which will provide information for ingest to Fdsys.

GPO is requesting $97,928,000 for the Congressional Printing and Binding Appropriation account, representing an increase of $8,153,000 over the level provided for FY 2008. This account covers the cost of printing and other information services supporting the legislative process in the House of Representatives and the Senate. These services include production—in both print and online formats—of the daily and permanent Congressional Record, bills, resolutions, and amendments, hearings, committee prints and documents, miscellaneous printing and binding including stationery and document franks, and related products, as authorized by the public printing provisions of Title 44, U.S. Code.